The Missouri Civil War on classic television

While searching through old movies on YouTube the other day, I saw the name of a familiar battle of the Missouri Civil War. Decision at Wilson's Creek was a 25 minute TV movie from the popular show Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. The show ran from 1956-1961 and many of the episodes were based on stories written by Zane Grey, one of the most famous Western writers.

This episode aired in 1957. I'm not sure if it's a Grey story or not. I can't find a tale by that name although of course it could have been retitled. The story opens with a Confederate officer (played by John Forsythe, the voice from Charlie's Angels) in the army of General Sterling Price resigning his commission and returning to his wife in Springfield. His army buddies deride him for a coward, but it soon turns out he's on a secret mission to find out Union troop strengths before the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

Other than the fictional character, the episode sticks fairly close to history. The main error was showing the Confederates in beautiful new uniforms, when in fact many of Price's men had no uniforms at all, or pretty ragged ones. The acting is fairly good, the writing so-so, and it's worth seeing as a historical curio and for a bit of old-time TV nostalgia.

Civil War Photo Friday: Colonel Robert A. Hart, CSA

This dapper gentleman is Colonel Robert A. Hart.

He was born in Ireland and immigrated to Arkansas before the war. On August 1, 1862, Hart joined the Confederate army and was commissioned the lieutenant colonel of the newly formed 30th Arkansas Infantry. On November 12, he was promoted to colonel and assumed command of the entire regiment.

The 30th Arkansas saw lots of action in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, taking part in most of the major battles as well as the 1864 invasion of Missouri that serves as a backdrop to my novel A Fine Likeness. On July 4, 1863, the regiment was part of a Confederate attack on the Mississippi river town of Helena. This was an attempt to relieve pressure on the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg, which ironically surrendered that very same day. Helena was well fortified and the Confederates were repulsed with heavy losses. Hart was wounded in the leg and taken prisoner. He died of his wounds on August 6, 1863.

The 30th Arkansas suffered 8 killed, 46 wounded, and 39 missing at the Battle of Helena. Lieutenant Colonel J.W. Rogan assumed command and led the regiment until the end of the war. The 30th got into some exciting adventures. More on those in later posts. Also check out Captain Richards Miniature Civil War for some great model soldiers he's made of this regiment!

Civil War Photo Friday: First at Vicksburg

Titled "First at Vicksburg", this painting at the US Army Center of Military History shows the Confederate lines at Vicksbur along the Mississippi River during the Union assault on 19 May 1863. The Union 1st Battalion, 13th Infantry, lost forty-three percent of its men, but was the sole regiment to get its regimental colors up to the top of the steep defences.

General Sherman called its performance "unequalled in the Army" and authorized the 13th Infantry to inscribe "First at Vicksburg" on its colors. Despite this heroism, the assault failed and a long siege lasted until July 4, when the rebel garrison finally capitulated. Soon all of the Mississippi River was in Union hands and the Confederacy was cut in half. From this point on, the war in the Trans-Mississippi; Missouri, Arkansas, the Indian territory, etc., would be in effect a separate conflict.

Photo courtesy U.S. Army.

Civil War Photo Friday: Union mortar boat

This ugly little vessel is a mortar boat. Used primarily by the Union navy, they were armored rafts carrying a heavy mortar. As the siege of the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg got underway 150 years ago this week, many of these vessels were towed up the Mississippi River and used to bombard the fortified city.

Mortars are handy in that they provide indirect fire. Instead of shooting directly at a target like regular artillery, they launch their projectiles at an arc, so they can hit targets behind hills and other obstructions.

In my sequel to A Fine Likeness, one of these mortar boats makes an appearance. Captain Allen Addison of the Union navy, and son of the protagonist in the first book, is at the siege of Vicksburg in his gunboat the USS Essex watching a group of mortar boats do their thing, when an incoming rebel shell gives him a nasty surprise. . .

. . .but you'll have to read about that later. I still have about 15,000 words to go before the book is done.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Charles Zagonyi, Soldier on Two Continents

At the start of the Civil War, both sides were desperate for men with military experience. The last major U.S. conflict had been the Mexican-American War, long enough before that its veterans were beyond prime fighting age. Luckily for the North, it had a good supply of immigrants who were veterans of wars in Europe.

One of them was Charles Zagonyi, a Hungarian who had fought with distinction in his nation's revolution of 1848. Having been born in 1828 he, too, was beyond prime fighting age, but that didn't stop him.

Through connections in the Hungarian community, Zagonyi was invited to join the large personal bodyguard of General John C. Fremont in St. Louis. Fremont was entranced with the pomp and splendor of European armies and surrounded himself with foreigners in glittering costumes. Southerners sneered at all the foreign accents, and Northerners wondered if these strange fellows could actually fight.

Zagonyi got a chance to answer this question October 25, 1861, during the First Battle of Springfield, and the answer was both "yes" and "no". Confederate General Sterling Price's army had taken Lexington in the center of the state before retreating in the face of superior numbers. Now he was in southwest Missouri and only holding one major city in the region--Springfield.

Fremont led 38,000 men to make sure Price didn't come back. At its vanguard was Zagonyi. The Hungarian was given the task of retaking Springfield and decided to do it with a splendid cavalry charge. The charge was splendid all right, that is until it fell into a Confederate ambush.

Zagonyi's men numbered a little more than 300, while there were about 2,000 rebels in town. The Hungarian was in a tight spot, but he pressed forward and after some tough fighting the rebels wavered and ran. "Zagonyi's Charge" soon hit headlines across a North eager for some victories. He could rightly say that he'd seen off a far larger force and taken an important city. On the other hand, he really only defeated a poorly armed rearguard of an already retreating army.

When Fremont was relieved of duty for corruption and failure to adequately defend Missouri (a story I'll get to sometime) Zagonyi found himself out of a job. Fremont later managed to get a command in the Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia, and again hired his old bodyguard as a cavalry commander. Both made a poor showing of themselves and resigned under a cloud.

It's unclear what happened to Zagonyi after the war. While many officers wrote memoirs, for some reason Zagonyi never did.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Westernmost Battle of the Civil War

As I mentioned in my post on the Civil War in Arizona, the year 1862 saw the westernmost fighting of the war when a group of Texas Confederates made it all the way to the western New Mexico Territory (what's now Arizona) and were pushed out by the Union California Column.

The main "battle" happened on April 15 at Picacho Peak, 50 miles northwest of Tucson at 111° 24' 17'' W longitude, when the advance guard of the column clashed with Confederate pickets. This is often called the westernmost land battle of the Civil War.

Well, it wasn't really a battle but a skirmish with only 23 soldiers involved, and there was a skirmish even further west than that one. On March 30, while the California Column was still headed for Tucson, it came upon a group of ten Confederates at Stanwix Station led by 2nd Lt. Jack Swilling, pictured here in this Wikimedia Commons image. They were burning hay that had been left out on the column's route to supply the horses. Swilling's men were greatly outnumbered and after firing a few shots, one of which wounded Private William Frank Semmelrogge, they wisely withdrew. Semmelrogge later recovered.

But we're not done yet! You see, Stanwix Station was about six miles southwest of Agua Caliente, which is at 113° 19′ 28″ W. Almost a year later on May 20, 1863, there was a shooting at La Paz, Arizona, which is at 114° 25′ 35″ W. Confederate sympathizer William Edwards fired upon a crowd of Union soldiers, killing Privates Ferdinand Behn and Thomas Gainor and wounding a civilian bystander. Edwards fled into the desert, where he later died of thirst. There was no exchange of fire and Edwards wasn't in the Confederate army, so whether you want to call this a skirmish or not is up to you.

In California there was a band of robbers who called themselves Confederate Partisan Rangers. Holding up a stagecoach doesn't count as a skirmish, though. There was also a standoff between Union soldiers and Confederate sympathizers with no shots fired, so let's strike that one out too.

None of these are battles. If you want the westernmost BATTLE of the Civil War, you have to go all the was east to Valverde, New Mexico, where on February 20-21 at longitude 106° 54' 53" W, several thousand men in blue and gray had a real, proper, standup battle.

The Battle at Old River Lake

By the summer of 1864 the Confederacy west of the Mississippi was in serious trouble. The Union occupied Missouri and northern Arkansas, rebel presence in the Indian Territory was all but gone, and the campaign to take New Mexico and open a corridor to California was a forgotten dream.

The rebels still had some fight in them, however. While the Union controlled the river after taking Vicksburg the year before, rebel soldiers and guerrillas regularly harassed shipping.

In May of 1864, Col. Colton Greene led 800 Confederate soldiers to Chicot County in the extreme southeast of Arkansas. Here the Mississippi was narrow and took several hairpin turns. Riverboats chugging upstream could only go a maximum of 13 mph and made fine targets. Greene set up his six cannon and pounded away at them.

He proudly reported: “I engaged 21 boats of all descriptions, of which five gunboats and marine-boats were disabled, five transports badly damaged, one sunk, two burned, and two captured. My loss was one subaltern and five privates slightly wounded. No guns or horses were hit. The river is blockaded.”

The Union command quickly sent 6,000 men under the command of General Andrew Jackson Smith. On June 5 they landed and 3,000 troops disembarked. There was a bit of skirmishing that evening but it was too late to start a battle.

The next day under heavy rain, the Union troops advanced. Facing them were only 600 rebels, the rest being sent to guard the line of retreat and another potential target to the north. They were positioned behind Ditch Bayou, now swollen with rain yet not visible to the Union men advancing over what they thought was an open field. The rain turned the field to mud and slowed the soldiers' progress and made it impossible to advance their own artillery.

The bluecoats advanced through a withering fire. Soon they discovered the bayou and realized they were trapped. They hunkered down in the mud, unable to advance because of the bayou and unable to retreat for fear of being cut down.

They were saved by some Union cavalry, who were able to cross the bayou to the south and flank the rebels. Greene ordered a retreat. That night the Union soldiers camped in nearby Lake Village, where they plundered homes for food and broke up furniture and fences to build fires. The next day they returned to their boats, only to have Greene's men snipe at them every step of the way.

Union casualties numbered about 180, while the Confederates lost about 100. Green's men withdrew from the area for fear of another attack but the harassment of steamboats continued until the end of the war. The Battle at Old River Lake was the last significant engagement in Arkansas, yet it's almost forgotten today.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Last Casualty of the Civil War

An estimated 700,000 men died in the Civil War. Historians have often asked the question: who was the last?

Generally the answer has been this unfortunate fellow, Private John J. Williams of the 34th Indiana Infantry, who was killed at the Battle of Palmito Ranch in Texas on May 13, 1865.

It was Williams' first battle and a completely unnecessary one. Both sides had heard the news of Lee's surrender and Johnston discussing terms with Sherman. Already there were mass desertions in the Texas units.

Maj.-General Kirby Smith, commander of all Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi theater, wanted to fight on. Rebel troops were still active in southeastern Texas, where they headed across the Mexican border to trade for much-needed supplies. There was a Union garrison just off the coast on Brazos Island and the commander sent some troops to take Brownsville, the border town through which the rebel supplies came.

The resulting battle saw the Union pushing back the rebels in the morning until rebel reinforcements arrived. Then the tables were turned and it was the bluecoats' turn to retreat. Casualties were low and only one man was reported killed, Private Williams on the Union side. So Williams got the unfortunate distinction of being the last man killed in the Civil War.

Other historians disagree, and point to the Skirmish at Hobdy's Bridge six days later.  On May 19, a group of men from the First Florida Cavalry (Union) rendezvoused at the bridge just over the border in Alabama to rejoin their unit after being on furlough. Unknown to them, their comrades had already set out after some Confederate bushwhackers.

The bushwhackers, however, were actually hiding near the bridge and opened fire on the latecomers. Three men from the First Florida were wounded and a fourth, Corporal John W. Skinner, was killed. After the war, the three men applied for an extra pension for being wounded in action, but army red tape told them since they were on furlough, they weren't qualified. It took three decades of wrangling before the army ruled they had returned to active duty when they arrived at the bridge as ordered, and therefore got an extra pension. Since the court ruled they were on active duty, Corporal Skinner was the last man to be killed in the Civil War.

Or maybe not. Further research of skirmishes in the waning days of the Civil War would probably uncover more such "last casualties." Dying in war is always tragic, but to die when the war was pretty much over must have been a doubly hard blow for these men's families.

Photo of Private Williams courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Battle of Hartville and the death of Colonel Porter

Two days after losing the Battle of Springfield, Confederate General Marmaduke and his cavalry raiders were still causing trouble in southern Missouri.

They'd been riding east, picking off small Union garrisons, burning bridges, and cutting telegraph wires. About 60 miles east of Springfield at the small town of Hartville, they came across their first significant resistance.

Col. Samuel Merrill and about 800 Union troops were on a forced march to reinforce Springfield. Instead came across the rebels sooner than expected. Merrill's pickets west of Hartville spotted the Confederate advance column at around 3 am and fired on them.

At dawn the rebels pushed forward. For a time the Union troops held them, but the rebels outnumbered them three to one and soon outflanked the Union line to the south.

This was precisely what Marmaduke needed to secure his retreat to Arkansas. That wasn't all he wanted, however. He wanted to defeat the Yankees and take the town. The Union troops hurried back to Hartville with the rebels in pursuit. Merrill positioned his men on a thickly wooded hill northwest of town. He had his men lie down just inside the treeline readied his artillery.

Moments later, the rebels formed up south of town and charged at the Yankees. Just as they drew near, Merrill ordered his men to rise and fire. As Union veteran and author Wiley Britton put it, "the flash and roar of the discharge of eight hundred Federal muskets burst forth from the dark recesses of the wood, announcing that a storm of leaden hail had been sent forth winged with death and woe."

Civil War Photo Friday: Veterans of the Battle of Prairie Grove

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Union victory at the Battle of Prairie Grove. This was a brutal slugfest in northwestern Arkansas that spelled the end to Confederate hopes of invading Missouri and opened up Arkansas for Union invasion. It would take both sides some time to fully realize the significance of this battle.

The battle has been well described in many places, such as this official site and the awesome blog Civil War Daily Gazette. So I'll just give you this interesting photo of the veterans of Company K, 34th Arkansas Infantry, taken at a reunion at the battlefield sometime around 1905-1916. This public domain image comes courtesy Campsite Artifacts, a very cool website run by a metal detectorist who specializes in finding (and selling) Civil War artifacts.

GUEST POST: Civil War Mystery: Objects in photographs are closer than they appear

Today I have an interesting guest post by Kathryn Hohmann, author of the Civil War novel Soldiers Rest, which like my own novel features photography as a central theme. She offers some tips on writing historical fiction. You can learn more about her on her webpage and Goodreads page. Thanks for coming, Kathryn!

Like a resident of a coastal town who rarely gets to the beach, I was surrounded by hallowed ground but never visited the Civil War battlefields of central Maryland. On weekend bicycle trips, I was more worried about the hilly terrain than the interpretive markers along the route. Although I sensed that the landscape possessed some eerie quality, I gave the matter little consideration.

Then I relocated to Montana and on a backcountry outing, I broke my leg and ended up bed-ridden and bored. I rented The Civil War by Ken Burns and found myself engrossed. As the series comes to an end, Burns touches on the years after the war. To illustrate how Americans turned away from memories of the conflict, he includes a remarkable image of glass plate negatives of Civil War photographs, scrapped and salvaged for the silver emulsions on their surfaces and recycled into glass panes for solariums.

These photographs –our collective heritage from the Civil War– dulled by years of sunlight and rain, were the inspiration for my historical novel, Soldiers Rest. The years spent writing my book and becoming conversant in a slice of the Civil War taught me a few lessons that I’d like to share.   

Hit the books – hard. Readers of historical fiction will spot your blunders. Study up, seek help and don’t be afraid to make revisions, especially if you’re in the e-book space. Read, research and read some more.

Take a small bite. History of any period is a sweeping canvas and unless you’re a Civil War scholar, you may want to consider limiting yourself to a small space of geography and time. I chose to concentrate on the aftermath of a single overlooked conflict, the Battle of South Mountain, part of the 1862 Maryland campaign. The event rarely gets the attention it deserves, overshadowed as it is by Antietam. The Battle of South Mountain was small enough to be a good candidate for my story, and focused enough so that when it came time for annual commemorations, the events were intimate and engaging, and there was little chance I would be lost in the crowd, as I might have been at Shiloh or Gettysburg.

An unofficial black Union soldier in Civil War Missouri

During the summer of 1862, Confederate Colonel Joseph Porter rode around northeast Missouri recruiting men for the Southern Cause. He assembled about 2,000 recruits, many without any training or even weapons. Pursuing him came Colonel John McNeil of the 2nd Missouri Cavalry with about 1,000 trained and armed men. McNeil finally ran Porter to ground at the town of Kirksville on August 6, 1862.

In a three-hour battle, McNeil kicked Porter out of Kirksville and seriously weakened his force. Porter's scattered recruits would be hunted down over the next couple of weeks.

An interesting footnote to this battle is found in a letter by Union Lt.-Col. William Shaffer: "I must speak of Colonel McNeil's colored man Jim. To him belongs the honor of killing the first man in the fight. Armed with a Sharps rifle, he did splendid work through the entire afternoon. Whenever a rebel showed his head at long range, Jim was almost certain to get him."

While this was two months before the First Kansas Colored Volunteers became the first black regiment to see battle at the Battle of Island Mound, it isn't the first report of a black man bearing arms in Missouri. Even during the border wars with Kansas in the 1850s, there were scattered reports of Jayhawkers having black men in their ranks. These guys were probably slaves freed on previous raids by the Kansas Jayhawkers into Missouri territory.

One question is: was Jim a slave or a freedman? Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery still existed in Missouri at this time because it wasn't considered a state in rebellion and therefore didn't come under the new law. Slaves were sometimes armed so they could go hunt for themselves and their masters, so a slave being a good shot isn't outside the realm of possibility. Some Unionists owned slaves and fought on the side of the North to preserve the Union, not free the slaves. Only some serious research could discover if Jim was a slave or a servant

It's also interesting to note that Jim was armed with a Sharps rifle, the finest gun at this time and a Jayhawker favorite. It's also the weapon of choice for the hero in my Civil War novel.

Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

First Kansas Colored Volunteers honored with State Historic Site

I've written here before about the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, a unit mostly comprised of runaway slaves from Missouri and Arkansas who fled to Kansas. They had the honor of being the first black regiment in the American army to see combat when they fought the Battle of Island Mound in Missouri on October 26, 1862. There they defeated a much larger force of Confederate bushwhackers.

Now, after long preparation, Missouri has set up the Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site. On the 150th anniversary of the battle they had a formal opening and reenactment. Check out the photo gallery on their site for some great shots!

Yeah, I'm a bit late with this news. Much have something to do with traveling in Iraq. :-)

Civil War Photo Friday: Banner of the 22nd US Colored Troops

Here's another great photo courtesy the Library of Congress. It's the regimental flag of the 22nd Regiment US Colored Troops from New Jersey. This unit was formed in January of 1864. For a time it had garrison and scouting duty until it became part of the Siege of Petersburg, a grinding nine-month attempt to cut off Richmond's railway network.

The regiment participated in numerous assaults on Confederate forts and won the honor of being among the first soldiers to march into Richmond when the rebel capital fell. You can read more of this regiment's fascinating history here.

It's interesting that the banner has the words Sic Semper Tyrannis ("thus always to tyrants"). Brutus supposedly said this while assassinating Julius Caesar and John Wilkes Booth was heard to say this after shooting Lincoln. The 22nd was one of the many regiments sent out to hunt for Booth.

The Civil War adventures of James Earp

James Earp was the older brother of famous lawman Wyatt Earp. He never earned the fame of his gunslinger brother, or even the lesser notoriety of Virgil and Morgan Earp. Jim, as most people called him, worked as a saloon keeper in Tombstone but didn't participate in the Gunfight at the OK Corral or the subsequent Vendetta Ride.

I never knew much about him until I started writing a book on the Earps for Osprey Publishing, due out in 2013. It turns out Jim saw service in Missouri during the Civil War. When the war started, he enlisted in the 17th Illinois Infantry, a Union outfit that soon marched into war-torn Missouri.

On October 21, the 17th Illinois saw its first major action at the Battle of Fredericktown in southeast Missouri. Confederate General "Swamp Fox" Thompson was in the area with 1500 men and had burnt an important railroad bridge. The 17th Illinois and some other units went after him.

Thompson placed his rebels along a wooded ridge overlooking the road on which the Union troops were approaching. A smaller detachment with three cannon stood in plain view in a cornfield next to the road as bait. The Union column arrived and attacked the Confederates in the cornfield. The 17th Illinois advanced on the enemy center as two other units attacked either flank. After some heavy fighting, the rebels retreated, but the Union troops soon came under a galling fire from the rebels hidden on the ridges.

Despite this, Thompson saw he was outnumbered about two-to-one and that he needed to withdraw. The 17th Illinois managed to capture one of the cannons in the cornfield, an old iron 12-pounder that was out of date, although not as rickety as the wooden cannon used at another battle in Missouri!

Being in the thick of the fight, the 17th Illinois suffered several casualties. One of them was James Earp. He took a bullet in the shoulder that crippled his left arm for life. He was invalided out and spent the rest of the war recovering and working various jobs. He joined his brothers in Tombstone in 1879, where the family gained their place in history. James died in California in 1926.


Numerous online sources say he was wounded on October 31, but the battle was in fact on October 21 and I cannot find any record of a battle involving the 17th Illinois for October 31. I suppose, then, that he was wounded at the actual Battle of Fredericktown and not some skirmish ten days later. I could be wrong, though. I'm in England at the moment and away from my collection of Civil War books!

Two other Earp brothers, Virgil and Newton, also enlisted in the Union army. I'll try to find out more about their experiences for future posts.


Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

July 4, 1862: The Union Navy captures Confederate "aircraft carrier"

On this day 150 years ago the United States was celebrating a grim Fourth of July. The nation was torn apart by a Civil War that was getting progressively bloodier with no end in sight. Union General McClellan's attempt to take the Confederate capital at Richmond had just failed. It wasn't yet clear if he'd be able to extract his army before it would get wiped out. The excellent blog Civil War Daily Gazette is covering this in detail.

There was one little Union victory on this date, however. The Confederate gunboat CSS Teaser was captured by the USS Maratanza. This photo, courtesy Library of Congress, shows the damage to the deck caused by a 100-pound rifled shell that made a direct hit. You can also see a nice photo of its bow gun here.

The CSS Teaser was a screw tug of 64 tons with a length of 80', a beam of 18', a depth of hold of 7'. She was armed with one 32-pounder rifle and one 12-pounder rifle. According to the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships,

"CSS Teaser had been the aging Georgetown, D.C., tug York River built at Philadelphia. Purchased at Richmond by the State of Virginia in 1861, she was assigned to the naval forces in the James River with Lt. J. H. Rochelle, Virginia State Navy, in command. Upon the secession of that state Teaser became a part of the Confederate Navy and continued to operate in Virginia waters. With Lt. W. A. Webb, CSN, in command, she took an active part in the battle of Hampton Roads, Va., on 8-9 March 1862, acting as tender to CSS Virginia. She received the thanks of the Congress of the Confederate States for this action

"Teaser was a pioneer "aircraft carrier" (balloon ship); she also became a pioneer minelayer when ordered 17 June to assist Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Under Lt. H. Davidson, CSN, she was used by the Confederate Naval Submarine Battery Service to plant and service "torpedoes" (mines) in the James River. While engaging Maratanza at Haxall's on the James 4 July 1862, a Union shell blew up Teaser's boiler and forced her crew to abandon ship. When seized by Maratanza, Teaser was carrying on board a balloon for aerial reconnaissance of Union positions at City Point and Harrison's Landing. Teaser was taken into the Federal Navy, and sold at Washington, D.C. on 24 June 1865."

Civil War Missouri enters a new phase

In 1861, things looked good for the Confederate cause in Missouri. The victories at Wilson's Creek and Lexington were heralded as a sign of things to come. The optimism didn't last. Soon the Confederate forces were pushed into the southwestern part of the state, where they stayed for the rest of the year. At the battle of Pea Ridge in March, 1862, the rebels were solidly defeated in northwest Arkansas and hopes of conquering Missouri for the South began to fade.

With attention shifted to New Orleans, which had just fallen to the Union, and the slow Union creep up the Mississippi River, those rebels still in Missouri must have felt somewhat forgotten. That didn't stop them from fighting, however. Guerrillas and small units of regular troops skirmished with Union troops regularly.

In the first three weeks of May, there were skirmishes at Bloomfield (twice), French Point (several times), Center Creek (several times), Big Creek, Carthage, Hog Island, Richfield, and Santa Fe Road. And these are only the skirmishes that made it into the Official Records! Several smaller ones were probably not reported, plus the numerous cases of individual violence would not have been reported except in local newspapers.

The war was far from over.

The above drawing is by Alfred Waud and is captioned "On skirmish line Officer turning to look at a dying soldier". This hasty sketch immediately gripped me when I was looking through the Library of Congress collection. It looks like it was drawn from life and is more expressive than many more polished works of art.

V is for Vicksburg

When the Confederate stronghold of Vicksburg surrendered to General Grant on July 4, 1863, the Confederacy was cut in half. Vicksburg controlled the Mississippi River, and with it in Union hands, there would be little communication between the Confederate states to the east of the Mississippi and those to the west of it.

My special interest has always been the Trans-Mississippi Theater. By this time, the best Confederate troops from Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas had been mostly drawn off to the killing fields of the east, leaving behind a weak army that included many conscripts. You'd think this would make those states easy pickings for the North, but the Union high command was also drawing off troops from places like Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa.

So when they were cut off from the rest of the Confederacy, western Confederates did not give up hope. True, they were undermanned and undersupplied, but they controlled a huge swathe of territory and kept up raids and minor campaigns against the Yankees until the very end. At least some of them did. The loss of Vicksburg was a huge blow to morale, and desertions increased in the Confederate ranks. Some of the roving bushwhacker bands I've mentioned before were actually AWOL soldiers, sometimes even from both sides, banded together into roving gangs of thieves.

Painting courtesy U.S. Army Center of Military History.

T is for Texans in the Civil War

"Don't mess with Texas!"

I'm not sure when this saying got started, but it may have been during the Civil War. Texan units fought in every theater of the war and were some of the best troops the Confederacy had. As Robert E. Lee once said, "Texans always move 'em!" Texans were involved in many of the battles in Missouri and even pushed as far west as Tucson, Arizona, briefly claiming that dusty frontier town for the South.

Texas was also the site of the last battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, fought on May 12-13, 1865, well after most Confederate armies had surrendered. This pointless engagement was a smashing Confederate victory!

As I've mentioned frequently on this blog, history is rarely clear cut. Parts of Texas had a strong Unionist sentiment. Some counties were dominated by German immigrants who had immigrated into one country only to find they were suddenly citizens of another. The Texas government had to strike a deal with these folks--don't rebel against the rebellion, keep farming, and pay your taxes, and you won't be conscripted into the Confederate army.

Some Unionist Texans took a more active part in the war. Like every other Confederate state, Texas had some regiments in the Union army. Hmmm. . .sounds like a good setting for a story.


Photo of Private Thomas F. Bates of D Company, 6th Texas Infantry Regiment, with D guard Bowie knife and John Walch pocket revolver courtesy Library of Congress. Don't mess with Texas!

N is for the Battle of Newtonia

The Battle of Newtonia on October 28, 1864, was the last Civil War battle in Missouri. The state had been in Union hands for more than two years when Confederate General Sterling Price led an invasion from Arkansas in September of 1864 in an attempt to take it back. He crossed the breadth of the state, fighting all the way until he suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Westport near Kansas City. His shattered army fled south, suffering another defeat at Mine Creek shortly afterwards.

Still fleeing south, they were harassed by a small Union army led by General James Blunt. All the other Union forces had given up the chase so while Price's army was demoralized, they actually outnumbered the overeager Blunt.

When Blunt came upon Price's supply wagons at the rear of the Confederate column, he formed up his cavalry and led them in a charge. The rebels were exhausted and demoralized through a long march and a string of defeats, but one Confederate unit remained strong--General J.O. Shelby's Iron Brigade. They rushed to the rear and fought off Blunt's charge. Shelby held them off long enough for Price's army to slip away into the Indian Territory.

It wasn't the end of the rebels' troubles. They struggled through snow and hail, fighting starvation while smallpox ravaged the ranks. It is at this low point that the as-yet-unfinished sequel to A Fine Likeness begins. The protagonist is a cavalryman in Shelby's Iron Brigade and he has his own ideas of how to win the war.

Actually this was the Second Battle of Newtonia. The first was a small affair that took place on 30 September 1862 and was also a Confederate victory. The only book on these battles is Larry Wood's excellent The Two Civil War battles of Newtonia. Also check out Larry Wood's blog for lots of cool posts on Missouri history, especially the outlaws of the Ozarks.

Photo of Blunt courtesy Wikimedia Commons.